Body mistaken for mannequin thrown away

For the second time this year, someone in the Tampa Bay area of Florida has mistaken a body for a mannequin and thrown it away. It happened in St. Petersburg this spring when a security guard trashed the body of an elderly woman who had jumped to her death from her 16th-floor apartment. And it happened in Spring Hill on Thursday when two workers hired to clean out a house believed the body of a man who hanged himself in the garage was a mannequin used for a prank. One of the men took the body to a dump, where county workers became suspicious and called deputies.



"It was obviously very unusual and very hard to believe," Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis said at a news conference on Thursday evening. Sheriff's officials said Israel Lopez, 50, and Adam Hines, 36, were hired to clean out the vacant house at 6527 Treehaven Drive. The house was in disarray, Nienhuis said, similar to an episode of Hoarders. Dead rodents filled the house and the workers believed that was the source of a foul smell, he said. While cleaning, the men saw what they both believed was a mannequin hanging from the ceiling in the garage.

"Both individuals as well as the property owners believed the lifelike mannequin was a distasteful Halloween-like hoax left by the former renters," sheriff's officials said in a news release. The men cut the body down, placed it in a pick-up along with other refuse, and hauled everything to the West Hernando garbage transfer station. There, county employees became suspicious. Shortly before noon on Thursday, they called the Sheriff's Office and reported that a body had possibly been disposed at a nearby dump. Deputies arrived and confirmed their suspicions.



While deputies investigated, Lopez returned to drop off another load of garbage. County officials recognized him and notified deputies. Nienhuis said Lopez and Hines made an honest mistake and all the evidence indicates that no crime was committed. "I think it's important to realize that … most people, they either have seen someone who has very recently passed … or they see them at a funeral home," Nienhuis said. "Obviously, this body was not anything close to either of those. It was somewhat mummified." Deputies identified the dead man as Jeremy Allen Witfoth, 33. Sheriff's officials said he was a previous renter, and it appears hanged himself sometime in the past several weeks.

You can watch Sheriff Nienhuis' news conference here, and there's news video here.